House of Mirrors 1: Diable
by scribblemyname
Summary: The first thread in a House of Mirrors. Le Diable Blanc and the Angel of Death. What binds them together is more than meets the eye.
1. Devils and Angels

HOUSE OF MIRRORS STORY ARC

STORY SUMMARY: The many threads of the multiverse are ripe for the plucking. Pick a card, any card. Once. Twice. Pick another. It's a House of Mirrors. Enjoy your stay.

DISCLAIMERS: Marvel owns it all. I'm just twisting it around a bit.

CANONICAL NOTES: AU, sort of. More like, visits to some other threads.

LANGUAGE AND ACCENTS: Cajun French is courtesy of Heavenmetal (many thanks). I will attempt to reproduce accents in this story arc.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I never intended to start this, but a certain Cajun had other ideas. If this is frighteningly out of my norm, blame him.

* * *

******Diable**

**- 1 -**

**Story Summary:** The first thread in a House of Mirrors. Le Diable Blanc and the Angel of Death. What binds them together is more than meets the eye.

**Canonical Notes:** Set in an alternate thread of the multiverse.

**Acknowledgements: **Dedicated to **Lucia de Medici**, who I blame for turning my ears to this seductive Cajun devil.

**Author's Note:** So, all my good intentions of not posting this particular story arc over here so I _won't_ be tempted to write it, as usual, whoosh! out the door. Hope you like.

* * *

"Everyone wants t' create de mos' powerful mutant in de world. Didn't y' ever wonder _why_?"

_Slip, slap. Cards slide between deft fingers. Slip, slap. Fan out their faces, cut the deck, and shuffle again. Slip, slap. Pick a card, any card._

"Could've guessed 't ages ago, couldn' y'? An' y' didn't...What exactly y' so afraid of?"

_Slip, slap. Those cards go sliding again. She holds her ears. "_Stop _it!" __she hisses, but who is he to listen to her?_

_Fan out the cards, cut the deck, shuffle again. Slip, slap. Pick a card. Hold out their shiny backs. C'mon, chère, pick one._

_Of course, she shouldn't listen to his snake charmer voice, gliding sinuously around her senses, teasing. Slip, slap. Shuffle the deck. Slip, slap. Cards sliding like his Cajun drawl crawling up her spine._

_Pick a card, any card._

_She shouldn't play this game. He's always gonna win. "Don't touch me, swamp snake."_

_"Ah, but where de fun in dat, p'tite?" Pick a card, any card. Slip, slap. Husky tones eating away inside her belly._

_Shouldn't she know she'll never be able to resist?_

"Took y' long enough, n'est pas? C'mere an' let dis one tell y' a story. Ain' like 'm goin' t' let y' forget."

* * *

- 1 -

~ DEVILS AND ANGELS ~

The World is Born Once

* * *

She should have known better. The ange cursed aloud from her bloody mouth. The grime of too many false attempts at escape had matted her hair with mud and bits of crumbling brick, obscuring white and auburn beneath brown and red.

The diable sat beside her, crouched, arms resting casually on his legs, gloved hands showing through his fingers here and there as he slid the cards in and out of his fingers. Slip, slap. Fan out their faces, cut the deck, shuffle again. His eyes—devil eyes, obsidian darkness, blackness, drown and lose your way if you wander in, blazing red irises cutting two circles across them—never strayed to the cards. He did not speak over the insidious, grating whisper of them sliding back and forth in his fingers. He was better groomed than she, his long brown trench coat clean and sliding over well-armored chest and thighs. Auburn hair soft and long, hung messily into his eyes. He did not always wear the plate of armor over his head. His skin was sun-kissed, shaded with five o'clock shadow along the jaw.

_He_ was not grimy from well-intentioned, badly planned escapes. _His _exposed flesh was not limited to his face and the rips along a leather bodysuit. _His_ voice did not rasp with the dry ache of thirst and ravishing hunger.

But both of them were red as blood.

Her fingers clenched. Silken leather, fitted to her skin. His gaze lingered on those hands before raking over her body again. She would have flinched away, but only anger flashed within those emerald eyes.

Slip, slap. The restless cards wove and threaded through his deft hands. She leaned back her head against the hard wall, pulling as far from the diable as possible. Metal clanked at her wrists. She did not get far. Her eyelids drooped, lulled with a pained exhaustion and the inexhaustible slipping, slapping, sliding of his cards.

A slow hiss escaped her mouth.

He did not ask what it meant.

Slip, slap. Fan out their faces, cut the deck, shuffle again. Pale skin covered the emerald eyes of the ange, sliding shut with the rhythmic sounds. Sliding cards, sinuous motion. Slip, slap. Shuffle again.

"Please," she sighed, then caught herself, caught her breath, and opened eyes with the agony of realizing she had let slip her plea.

Red and black demonic eyes burned intently into hers. Slip, slap. The cards slid through his fingers. He didn't touch her, didn't speak.

She turned away. Her throat worked as if she tried to swallow, and she coughed, leaning over to spit out blood.

Slap. The cards stopped.

Her muscles froze, tense beneath his unyielding gaze. She was still turned away from him, her pale, slender neck exposed where a blade had cut her suit. Her skin trembled.

A gloved finger traced over the edge of that silky skin, thumb rubbing gently the dirt from between the cords of her throat. She gasped and trembled, tried to scramble away but could only pull against the clanking chains, bound fast. He did not touch her with the bare fingers showing through the glove, only sliding, almost tenderly, the leather against her. Finally, he drew back.

"Please what?" His voice was a low, husky drawl that sent her shivering.

She whispered, "_Please_ don't."

The moment lay without a breath. Her jaw tightened. No sound. No more would come from that slender throat.

Then, slowly, gratingly, the slip, slap of the sliding, rhythmic cards began.

Again.

* * *

Mystique would kill her. If Essex or this endless torture didn't first.

She wanted to scream with the irresistible, endless torment of those sliding cards, that mesmerizing voice crawling up and down the inside of her stomach whenever she dared to speak. But she couldn't. Speaking at all was painful, nearly impossible. Her gut had threatened to heave, but all she could manage was the deep, aching cough of the empty-bodied, weak-fleshed captive. Mystique would kill her if she knew her own daughter—_daughter!_—had botched a job so badly.

But at least...

No, don't think it. Thinking was worse than speaking. Feeling was worse than thinking.

She had not forgotten whose lair she now held occupancy in, that Essex was the most powerful telepath left alive—(Jeannie didn't count; Jeannie was dead to them, forgotten; and whatever in hell the Phoenix was, telepath didn't begin to cover that monstrous creature of fire and death)—or that the devil crouched beside her could read her emotions as easily as she could slide under his skin and make him hers—(or make him _her_, never forget the real monster lying within)—with just a touch, such innocent, painful, innocuous, insidious touch—or that the slipping, slapping, sliding whispers of his movements could just as easily be the ticking of a clock, sliding under her skin and the layers of her mind, slicing them open, flaying her emotions, bending them, _shaping_ them... She wouldn't be the first.

They liked to pretend she was more unmalleable than she was, that her mind could not be shaped or her emotions tethered and bound, reworked, that somehow her chimera mind could save her.

She was not so naive.

And there went that slipping, slapping, sliding...

She hissed. It grated on her, wore away the smooth edges of her nerves. She felt sensitized and raw, like just one touch could shred her into a hundred million pieces that all the king's horses and all the king's men could never put back together. He never tired, never spoke unless she broke her deathly silence from a half-dead throat, just slid those cards between those fingers, bare and gloved, threat and seduction. He wore her raw.

Mystique would kill her. She held to that brutal harshness of her mother, cradled remembered lectures, biting, clawing, hooking words and barbs settled under her skin. They kept her feeling. They kept her alive. They kept the torturous breath rasping in and out of lungs too tired to want to go on, held her back from the inviting, deadening lull of cards sliding against her senses, bit holes into seductive whispers, frightening, drowning eyes—obsidian and fire, like phoenix wings, the ends of the world. She could not bring herself to look into those eyes. If she did, the battle, and thus the war, would be lost.

She remembered Mystique. Odd that. Brutality would keep her alive. It kept her from drowning.

And _God,_ did she want to drown.

* * *

She came back to with a lull at the edge of her consciousness and stiffened, knowing what terror that meant. She sat up. No chains on her wrists, chafing, clanking, binding her to the devil nearby. The floor still cold and concrete, the odors of mud and her own blood still filled her nostrils. But the devil was gone.

She blinked at the bars and the red hallway, stained with other captives' bodily fluids as they were dragged across those reaches. She stared at the silent concrete floor, the empty walls, the dead stillness of the air.

He was gone.

It seeped into her slowly, then splashed her with the shock. She gasped for air. But what was this odd deadness about her senses? She clawed at herself, scratched until she felt blood and pain and trembling. She was alive.

Her weakened body hit the wall again. She caught her breath. Don't do too much. Just breathe. Her mind was clear once more, but the angel was not a fool. It would only be a matter of time before the devil or Essex or some other horrifying figure returned and the torments began anew. She needed to think, something she had done too little of before she took the job in the first place.

Calculated detritus of thought began to clink and tumble about the corners of her brain. She let them. Let them ring and make small noises, catch the attention of Essex if they so pleased. Her thoughts whirled like cogs and wheels in complex machinery, took on a faint hum and whir and the many-colored splendor of a thousand minds. The many-headed beast had awakened. Her chimera roared and began to hunt—and to feed.

A calculated risk that, but she was out of options. This time, she was ready when the footsteps thundered down that hall and the beast of Lord Sinister growled deep in his throat, blood dripping from clawed hands. She was ready when she saw the whisper of a coat and burning devil eyes in the darkness behind it.

Her throat still hurt. She did not whisper. Green gaze vulnerable in her dank cell, beneath her blood. Calling. The crook of a snake charmer, a lion tamer, for this beast was her lion and the devil her snake.

_Come and get me, sugah,_ the chimera crooned.

The beast growled and lunged for the bars. The door swung open beneath his weight, and more clinking tripped about her brain.

Phoenix could ruin everything.

But what she _wanted_—just one thing to sate the monster lying beneath her skin, _don't ya know, don't rip this covering ovah mah skin, 'cause, sugah, gonna rip out yahr soul_—just a touch, an insidious, innocent, dangerous, innocuous touch.

Flesh.

The beast howled when he touched her. She took him into her mind, her chimera mind, roaring with him, feeling the fangs rip through her mouth, the claws stretch from her fingers. Muscle and sinew knit together. Life pushed through her veins. Battle-lust reddened her vision. She gave the beast to the chimera and the chimera roared, shoving away the feral beast's unconscious form, and dropped to a crouch against the concrete floor.

She growled, staring at the devil in the dark, blood dripping from her fangs, the residue of her own unbroken skin. The chimera rippled beneath her skin, harnessing the beast.

Slip, slap. The cards began to slide and whisper between his fingers. She fought the rising urge to rend him limb from limb. Slip, slap. Fan out their faces, cut the deck, and shuffle again. He was smirking at her, burning his devil gaze over hers, and then she remembered in panicked anguish, she could not let him capture her and turned away.

So close. Drowning, _drowning_.

She had what she wanted, didn't she? She was healed. With a sudden burst of rage, she flung the animal from her cell with a mere thought and uplifted hand. The beast barreled into the devil's feet, but he merely chuckled, low in his throat, cards slipping, slapping, sliding.

She could follow the beast, battle the devil, escape.

She was not so naive.

They stared one at another, neither meeting the other's eyes. And the cards slid through his fingers, across her senses, rubbing the smooth edges of her nerves. He wore her raw.


	2. Pain and Subterfuge

- 2 -

~ PAIN AND SUBTERFUGE ~

A Time to Embrace

* * *

The devil hauled her sputtering into a vat of frigid water that soaked her instantly to the bone. Cold leather melded against her taut flesh. She fought him, struggled, kicking, scratching, hitting—until suddenly the water was no longer cold. She froze in the humming heat charged around her.

Pink glow lit up the cavern, glowing from the water. The heat of his fingers seeped through the material of her bodysuit. Charged molecules bumped up against her, starting a low whine. Low, seductive whispers in the devil's tongue.

"C'mere."

She walked through the fiery, wet, blanketing, enfolding heat to reach him, shuddered beneath his sensitive touch. Gloves traced her body roughly, suddenly no longer gentle. He scrubbed her quickly, every place the mud and blood had covered her, washing out the filth of her hair, her suit, her skin beneath the tears. She stared at the shadowed stubble on his chin. Her hands dug tightly into his arms, holding on to stay aright beneath his brutal ministrations.

And then it was over. He stared at her. She shuddered beneath the intensity, the _heat_, of that veiled gaze. She would not look at him, would not speak.

At least...

But she could not think it, forget whose lair she was in. Cold, sinister whispers of telepathy penetrated the air in these caverns. A younger, more heated power roiled in a dance with his. She could not think, could not feel, let those brushing tendrils of empathy and charm wheel her into the devil's kiss, could not let them bend her, shape her, mold her to their will. She would not have been the first.

This moment had stretched too long, but the angel did not dare to lift her eyes to the devil's gaze. She thought of the battle, focused hard upon it. She could not lose this battle, even with his fingers hot on her arm, reaching upward, tracing fire across her breast, cupping her chin. She closed her eyes as he tilted it back.

She was utterly surrounded in his power. The heat roiling in the water. The fierce, brightening glow in her bodysuit. The painful, hushing, lulling sensations about her emotions. Reeling her in, coaxing, begging her to let him touch her in the most intimate of ways.

Too long. She grasped for something, anything, to break the woven spell he so quickly entrapped her with.

The chimera.

For a moment, she fought it, prickling it with all the invasive spears of her mind, and the chimera roared to life, a thousand heads of thought, emotion—a thousand voices clamoring for relief.

He snapped back, one hand releasing her, the other tightening painfully around her wrist. He dragged her from the vat. She hissed and bit her mouth so the blood came at the rough way her body hit the edges, hit the concrete slab of a floor, hit the wall. He pushed her ahead of him and she went.

* * *

The ange woke in a haze, body enveloped in a warm comfort that dulled her senses and yet, so familiar, so...

Her hand gripped the sheets as she shot upright. She didn't look up, shivered violently, realizing in horror her torn bodysuit had been exchanged for one of her own silky nightgowns she had worn once upon a time in this room.

Anywhere, anywhere but here.

But she was here.

This silence was deceptive, ingratiating, swirling with the scent of cigarettes and spices. Her skin prickled with awareness of his gaze. It had been so _long_. Or had it?

Her thoughts stuttered to a halt.

"What am Ah doin' heah?" the angel asked abruptly, suddenly bringing up her fierce emerald gaze to meet the devil's.

He was watching her, leaning against the inside of his own doorway, blowing out smoke from another cigarette. This was what it took then to bring out the Rogue, neh? The diable's dark gaze blazed over her. She clutched at the sheet to cover herself. It wasn't enough.

Never quite _enough_.

He pushed off the frame, closing the door with a short gesture, and glided toward her. She could not help but watch. Nothing had changed. He was all liquid and shadow, darkness and terror, and yet everything she ever wanted. But he was not hers. Never had been. Everything had changed, but never quite _enough_.

He deliberately leaned over her—_too close _she could almost taste him, all spices and fire—to stub out his cigarette in the ash tray on the nightstand, deliberately held her stare steadily with his while he did it.

She hardened her eyes. "What am Ah doing here?" she repeated, enunciating the words into knife points.

His black and red gaze burned into her eyes, drowning her in heat and hurt and hardness and promise, and she knew then that this was punishment for her arrival, for failing to do the one thing she had always done.

He leaned over and kissed her.

His wrath tasted dark and spicy on her tongue. His body fit against hers with a pained familiarity, but his hands were rough and hard on her flesh.

"'M de diable t' your ange, neh?" he whispered against her mouth. She breathed him into her veins like poison. "'M just your devil." He nuzzled the word against the hollow of her neck, hands sliding downward as his kisses traveled down her body, shadowed the curve of her hip as she swallowed. "De sin t' your flesh."

_She doesn't get a good look at her attacker until he has her briefly and ineffectually pinned against the floor and she gasps, "Remy."_

_Surprise in those fiery eyes meeting hers. Nothing that matters. Their sides are not them._

_But then he's inside her, drawing her out with that insidious charm, sliding it under her skin—"Rogue"—and the chimera, confused, withdraws, Essex closing in..._

_She has no choice._

""M jus' y' devil," he whispered against her. "Diable, neh?"

She chose her weapons well.

He kissed the bared skin of her leg and she whimpered. She could not help but respond to him.

Every single job, she took inventory of only one thing: was _he_ there, waiting for her. She had failed one time, and this was her punishment.

"Ah never wanted to fight ya," she whispered.

His grip on her hips tightened, and he sat up. His red devil eyes burned down into her own.

"All I wanted was y'."

* * *

_She strokes the back of his neck with long, slender fingers, allowing the softness of his hair to brush her skin. She has been sitting for a while, thinking, in the barely lit darkness of his room. Finally, she bends over his head and kisses him._

_He stirs in her arms, but does not reach out to brighten the lamp. Of course, _he___ doesn't need to—not with his red and black devil eyes. Diable..._

_"Y' ever goin' t' sleep?" he murmurs against her and sits up on one arm to stare at her._

_She looks into those beautiful eyes, the way they burn and draw her in. Only he can find her in the reeling, boiling morass of her mind, and when their gazes meet, she is the only one beneath her skin._

_A small smile, then she shakes her head gently, still not willing to let go of him._

_He arches an eyebrow. Always could see through her. "What's botherin' y', chère?" He asks with that confident tone that means he's sure she's going to tell him._

_He gets a glare for that._

_"Mah debt's about paid," she blurts before she can lose the strength of will again._

_They remain staring. Nothing has changed, and yet...everything has changed. His face is like a stone. He rolls over, swings his legs off the bed, and rests his arms on his knees._

_"Y' leavin'?"_

_Her hands, now empty, are restless. She fiddles with the edge of the blanket. "Been thinkin' about it." She shrugs, even if it's to his back. How can she speak these thoughts that flit about her mind? Memories... Of a home. "Ah have a mama," she says. "Raven."_

_Raven has never been on good terms with Essex._

_He does not answer for a long moment. Finally, still staring at the wall and not at her: "You and him don't change you and me."_

_She catches her breath. Essex owns him, body and soul._

_"Ah don't ever want ta faght ya."_

_He turns. A deceptively genuine smile. He leans over, pins her beneath him. "All I want is y'."_

_She tastes the heat of his mouth, the sweetness of his sincerity..._

_The bitterness of the lie._


	3. Lies and Promises

A/N: Sorry it's shorter than I wanted (by about a third) and it took so much longer to write than I wanted (getting original fic out there into the greater world) and that it isn't _your_ stories, **S2T** (I have to write what comes), but it's a chapter and it's written. Hope you like.

**jessjess3377, Tempest S. **(Hopefully, it'll start making sense here.), **BasiaM82** (Yay. I wanted to do something different with this one, and I'm glad it's working. There is some dialogue [pretty important stuff, that], but it isn't the primary way I wanted to tell this story.), **Merr2** (You are awesome, girl. And sweet. Very sweet. "Remy-or, Le diable; was like a nightmare hidden in the shadows. You portrayed a side of him I haven't seen in a long time; and dare I say I loved him. I loved the danger than oozed from around him and filled the dark." I hope I can keep that up, 'cause this isn't your typical Romy.)

**Lucky's Girl** (You are so awesome. But yes, this one's told in pieces. Lots of them. And you certainly picked out the key line of this whole thing: "I liked the line about Essex owning him body and soul." Thanks for reading and glad you're enjoying it.), **ruroca57** (Should come a tiny bit clearer now, but I assure you, this is only the tip of the iceberg. :grinning madly: ), **Chellerbelle** (Thank you! I hope the journey lives up to your anticipation. :hints to muse: ), **Sharky237** (Thank you, thank you! This was a bit of a taking my style to its extreme edge, so I was kinda just hoping it would work for anyone.), **Indigo-Night-Wisp** (Guess: warm. Okay, somewhat hot. But you gotta wait another chapter before their exact _current _relationship becomes clearer. This chapter should clear up some history. And yes, plot is coming.)

Thanks all. Please enjoy the story.

* * *

- 3 -

~ LIES AND PROMISES ~

A Time to Refrain from Embracing

* * *

_Raven doesn't want to hear what Irene is telling her, but that hard, thin line of her lover's mouth says this isn't just Irene, Rogue's aunt, speaking. This is Destiny. And she's seen an end she doesn't like._

_"Raven, she is _our_ daughter," Irene says softly, equal parts gentle and harsh. "Not just yours. I want what is best for her. I do not want this future I see."_

_Insanity. It's hard for Raven to believe. Not when they did everything right. They kept Rogue from touching anyone long after her powers first manifested, gave them time to grow and her mind to grow with them before allowing her to take that first step. They were proud of her. She could control her gift. Part of it anyway._

_Insane._

_"It's impossible," Raven mutters and sits next to Irene on their bed._

_Irene touches her arm gently. "We must."_

* * *

_Raven has never been on good terms with Essex, but she has the one thing he wants and cannot have._

_Jeannie._

_In exchange for a supervised medical, complete with samples, Raven's daughter gets the help with her mutation that she needs. The only reason Rogue owes any debt at all is the difference between what Essex _really _wants and what he is able to get. He wants the Phoenix; he has Jeannie's genes. But the Phoenix is all in her mind._

* * *

_Rogue never asks her aunt if Gambit is part of her destiny._

* * *

He tasted like warmth and spices and darkness and all the things she had been trying to forget. Her body remembered him, arched into his touch. Her hands ached to reach for him, hold him closer, feel every part of who he was.

She could never touch his heart.

The ange knew that memory was not safe, but memory was safer than thought and who they once were than who they had become.

* * *

_Her mind was a maelstrom. Or minds. So many voices, so many _people _fighting for control that for the first time in Essex' telepathic life, he found himself completely unable to penetrate to the one voice beneath the rest that actually belonged._

* * *

_Silence__._

_It startles her so much, she uncurls within her mind from the small, protected fetal position she had adopted at the very back of everything and looks around. It's like an ocean around her, other psyches hushed and seething beneath the waves. That's when she realizes the ocean is foreign. It isn't hers. It is the calming, compelling force willing the voices around her to silence._

_The realization makes her stand and look up and surface. Her body stirs, her mouth opens as if to speak. Finally, she opens her eyes._

* * *

_They come from every back-alley, underground, corrupt world you could name. They are the light and the dark, the song and the shadow, the cries outside your bedroom window at night. There is no common ground, no shared history, no ties that bind them together. They share only one thing alike._

_Essex._

_Gambit is the leader who binds them together, the silver tongue to reel them in to his devil master's employ. Sabretooth is the violent mercenary, who kills for the love of killing. Scalphunter is the intelligent hunter, the strategist to guide them. Arclight is rough brawn, who will do any work for a pretty penny. Rogue is the hopeless lost cause, for even Sinister cannot unlock the secrets of her mutation._

_But Gambit can._

_Rogue is the big guns, the powerhouse of the Marauders. She'll absorb anyone or anything as she pleases, adding to the menagerie of split personas in her mind and powers. She can flick away the annoying Riptide with a telekinetic burst and a raised brow. She can use Vertigo's borrowed powers to lay the Sabretooth low. (Only _nice_ kitties are fun to play with.) She can grind the entire team into the dust if she so chooses. She can fly overhead and feed strategies direct into their minds. She can play nice or she can play nasty. She is a hundred faces, hearts, _people_ wrapped beneath a single skin._

_There is one person she does not dare to anger: their leader._

_He is the one person she cannot absorb, cannot read telepathically, cannot fight against, cannot hide her true self from. He grips her arms and calls her name—"Rogue"—reaching for the emotional signature that belongs to the body she's in. He can draw her out and silence the voices inside of her head. He can touch her and force all those extra powers away._

_Is it any wonder she loves him?_

_He is the only one who knows her name._

* * *

His red devil eyes burned down into her own. Snake charmer, _diable_, her own dark fantasy, her desire, her leash, the stranglehold upon her soul...

The ange knew she shouldn't let him own her, but she never was that good at listening to her own advice. Her body was his; he knew her every curve and hollow, knew the things that made her shiver, made her ache, made her _his_.

She shouldn't let herself stare into those eyes. She shouldn't let herself drown.

* * *

_It has been weeks since she was anything like in charge of her own body__. And now, the first thing she sees is his eyes—dark pools of black with blazing red irises—staring into her own. Her mind is a lull, caught up in the intensity of his gaze. She's never seen him before, she knows nothing about where she is or why, but in that moment, she would do anything he asks her._

_She should feel disquieted at this; some small part of her is awake enough to realize that, but not to do anything about it. She reaches up one hand to touch him. It stops just shy, almost without her understanding why she should stay away._

_She whispers, "They're beautiful."_

_At the edge of her vision, something—no, some_one—_moves, but she keeps her eyes on the diable hovering over her. He smiiles at the edge of his mouth, an uncertain thing, as if rare on his face._

_"Y' an ange."_

* * *

The diable stared down at the ange, still breathing hard, still recovering from his touch. She slipped, looked up, winced when she realized what she had done.

He captured her in his gaze, and she was whole beneath her skin.


	4. Lovers and Enemies

A/N: Sorry for the eons-long wait. Uh... yeah.

**Diable Blonde-Existentialist** (Thank you! The style is more poetic than prose at times, but I've got to a bit of both here. This chapter should help to make things clearer.), **CaptMacKenzie** (I'm always excited when you like a piece. You have such good taste. And well, Jean is around, just not as Jean. It gets nasty and nastier. Empathy was a fandom extrapolation of "charm." Gambit actually has a lot of canon spottily but emphatically supporting that his charm is part of his mutation.),

**Lucky's Girl** (Thank you! History was indeed in order, and there's a whole more to come.), **freakinaforest** (I'm glad it's working because, while the fic is a departure for me, it's really different because _I'm _getting the drip-feed from a certain snake charmer storyteller.), **Merr2** ("I love that she cannot escape or hide from him like she can from the others." That's my favorite element of this, stripping down the characters to what they do to each other and their imperviousness to anyone else.), **Indigo-Night-Wisp **(Hopefully this chapter answers any remaining questions about their general history together. As for original fiction, I point you to my pen name Liana Mir [available from Amazon] or for posted not yet published to lianamir dot com. Click on the Bibliography menu.)

Hope y'all like.

* * *

- 4 -

~ LOVERS AND ENEMIES ~

A Time to Keep Silence

* * *

_Gambit wakes to the shaking and trembling of the entire facility. He wakes as he always does when he senses trouble, alert, still, and with a lightning fast inventory taken of all available weapons. They've been holed up here in their southernmost location for the last ten days—Gambit, Phoenix, Sabretooth, and Scalphunter—working on something Essex refuses to define for the team leader of the Marauders. But that doesn't mean no one knows what it is._

_Certain now that the threat isn't in his private quarters, Gambit moves swiftly, out of the bed, throwing said inventory of weapons into useful locations on his person as he lets his kinesthetic and empathic senses sweep out through the facility and stops cold.  
_

_Rogue._

_Cursing fluently in five different languages, he goes into action, out of his quarters, and heading straight for his former lover and right hand. His sweep isn't bringing him any other signatures and it lights into him like a fury that she's come here alone. He's been expecting _someone_—Mystique weren't the kind of mutant to leave well enough alone, and he's done his own research into the latest project—but he wasn't expecting her. He knows Rogue and both of them know he has her number. He never asked why they haven't fought in the eighteen months since her defection, haven't even seen each other, but now he knows he's been taking it for granted._

_And there she is, putting a lock on Phoenix that would be downright impossible if the Rogue didn't have every dead and living telepath known to man burning inside her own genes and mind, but she does and only Gambit has ever been able to stop her._

_He swings out his bo staff, pretends this security breach is just an exercise, a practice run between two people who are deadly in battle and would never dream of killing each other._

_She senses him before he reaches her, throws out a telekinetic wave to send him flying, but he was ready for that and throws himself under the arc to swing up and hit her with the staff. She sees him, green eyes darkening and widening in that perfect face of de ange._

_His blood runs that much colder. She didn't do her legwork. She's surprised to see him._

* * *

Essex turned from his work surface to the devil in shadow at the back of his lab. "And?"

Phoenix glanced up with mild interest, aware that Rogue was once a Marauder and had been in this very lab under the boss's medical perusal, but clearly unaware that she had anything to worry about.

"She's restin'," the diable replied. His gaze did not wander over the beakers and test subjects, or even stray to his lover's face. He had never had time for distraction.

Essex made an impatient gesture. "Did she work any damage to the facilities?"

The diable's burning red and black stare met Essex'. He shrugged. "Not'in' dat can't be fixed." It was a lie or a half-truth at best. The ange was trying to escape. That meant her job was done.

* * *

_She thinks she owns him, this firebird, this goddess. She thinks he is ravished by her beauty, held captive by her power. She does not know the shackles that bind his soul._

_"If you could choose how to go," she begins soft, in word if in nothing else, "how would you choose?" It is evening, nearly night—her room, not his; he doesn't want her in there, and she is wise enough to heed him in that.  
_

_The diable runs his fingers through her cloud of red hair, studies the way the remainder of light filtering through her bedroom window makes it glow to his heightened vision._

_"I'd take de whole world wit' me." He drops her hair and turns away from her to lean on one arm for sleep._

_He has satisfied her._

* * *

Phoenix. Goddess of life and death, birth and rebirth. Everyone knew exactly what she was. No one, not even Essex, was quite certain of Gambit.

Except...

_Gambit tells her once, while he still is still gentle with her and her fragile, shattered self-identity (that lasts all of six months), about the one thing he hates and has become. _

_She reaches up and traces his face with her hand. __"Y'all aren't a devil," she whispers, fingers brushing delicately against his face. The ange was unlike anyone he had ever known._

_His burning eyes meet hers for the first time without charming, completely intent upon her. __The diable takes in her soft fierce words, the stubborn will in the set of her jaw, that unflickering resolve within her eyes. He reaches to tangle one hand through the silken strands of her hair and stare into the roaring chimera of her mind, determine whether her own brand of insanity has spurred such words._

_"Chère." He wants to laugh in her face, blunt and harsh, but the ange shakes her head._

_"Not to me."_

_She means it, his ange,_ his. _That's the first time they make love._

* * *

The diable did not care what the ange had done. He served his debt in Essex' service. What bound Gambit to Essex was unrelated to what bound him to Rogue.

Nevertheless, he took the time to shove Creed out of his sickbay bed and tell the feral to get his healing act together and get on watch. He suggested Scalphunter to stop repairing the damage Rogue had wrought in her maelstrom and earth shaking and keep an eye out for a rescue team. The man wisely took it as the order it was. Then he went to figure out exactly what his chère had been up to.

* * *

_What he has taken for granted was never an accident. She didn't want to fight him. She's been making sure he isn't there._

_But they're fighting now, and it_ isn't _practice. They fling themselves at each other, grapple flesh to flesh and mind to mind, empathy to that flickering chaotic schizophrenic chimera she calls her power. She can decide when she touches whether to touch or not, but her decision holds no weight. His body generates a biokinetic field her skin can never cross. This is battle and claiming every advantage he has ever built up against her. They're fighting for blood._

_She knows what this facility is about, why Essex has spent the last two decades gaining control of every mutant and government he can get his hands on. He knows and she knows all the things that Essex never told them. Then again, the ange's aunt is destiny._

_He is inexorable. This is something Essex won't forgive if he fails, so he doesn't fail. Hammering at that chimera with all the subtlety he can muster. __That devil charm he calls his empathy has limitations. He can only make her do what she already wants to, but dieu, he already knows the ange wants him. __Quiet. Shhh... The hush of a snake charmer, the sibilant whisper of the serpent himself. He is winning, she is losing, and she can't afford to do that._

_Pinned beneath his body, she swears and calls him, "Diable."_

_His charm is slammed outside her mental walls, and he's thrown back to square one with the harshness of that word. He knocks her out with a hot, dark fury and_ lets_ Creed throw her in a cell_.

_Betrayal._


End file.
